Lantlôs is a relatively new band, even to the scene it hails from; which is relatively new itself. Post-black metal, blackened shoegaze or whatever you want to call it is a fairly new genre to the metal world. Unlike most post-black metal bands, however, Lantlôs usually uses faster drumbeats and higher oriented chords revolving around a jazz based sound. I first heard about them when they released their first album, and I fell in love with their sound. It was a fresh sound to the black metal scene, especailly since most bands these days just sing about the same shit over and over.

The album starts with a simple jazz oriented chordal opening. To be honest, I wasn't that impressed with the first song until the chorus, when the entire beat of the song changed up and they started using double bass. The song is good, but it just made it feel a little too slow with the simplistic jazz beat. The chordal structure was great, focusing on more then just 1/3 drops, power chords and reversed power chords, which is hard to do in the style of music they play.

Like most shoegaze, they used many effects, and an extreme amount of track overlay. I could probably hear 5 guitar tracks in the loud parts of the song, and each one had either a reverb or a gain blast on it making the album 20x more atmospheric then with just one guitar. I actually enjoyed it, even though I hate it when bands mask their sound with a bunch of delays and reverb.

The instrumental parts of the songs weren't too difficult. An novice could play most of the songs. The only real difficult parts were the switches, especially the 5/8 timing on some of the songs. I loved that they didn't stick to the traditional 4/4 or 3/4 timing in all their songs, so that also gave it a unique feel.

All in all, Lantlôs has surprised me again; in more ways than one. I can honestly say that of all the post-1990's albums, this is the best one I've ever heard. It ranks up there with Crack the Skye and Wormwood for me, which is hard for a band to do. I could even go as far as to put it as one of my top 10 albums of all time. It's the sweet melodic sounds that their jazz influenced shoegaze puts out. It just feels so right when you listen to this record. There is honestly no words to describe it.

Highlights: These Nights Were Ours, Pulse/Surreal, .Neon